Large group, how do you run it? Options

[wind_in_the_ston...]

One day we woke up and found our gaming group to have eight people. Seven players is a bit large, so we decided to run with two GMs. (we rotate, round robin). This lowers the number of players, and also makes a large group easier to handle. But now, we added another player (former player returned to the group). Even with two GMs, combat took forever (forever + 1, compared to normal SR).

What we've been doing, is the primary GM runs things, and the secondary GM helps out with mundane tasks like dice rolling. I don't think this saves us enough time, and doesn't give the secondary enough to do. What I wanted to see (I haven't had my turn as GM yet), is have one GM oversee things, and the second GM play the opposition. Either NPCs, in roleplaying situations, or the bad guys, in combat. But even this only speeds things up a little. Combat becomes more efficient, but you still have to wait your turn to act. And we don't have just twice the number of PCs as some groups, we also have twice the number of opponents.

Now I'm thinking that we're going to have to break combat into two groups. Maybe divide the action by physical location, or by physical-versus-astral. Two groups, each doing their own battle, probably syncing at the end of each turn, in cae of overlap.

What do you think? Have you had this sort of problem, and do you have any suggestions?